OPTICAL ACUMEN
At the Intersection of Data Visualization and Investment Research


Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Clocking Investment Performance
I have a fun little article in the February/March issue of Morningstar Magazine. It's a simple concept that takes advantage of the fact that there are 12 months in a year and 12 hours on a clock face. The monthly performance of an index or security is represented by the length of line for each hour (with January in the one o'clock position), with positive months in green and negative months in red. The shape of the each cluster makes it easy to assess the relative performance and volatility of multiple indexes or securities.

Here's what the performance clocks look like (in U.S. dollars) for six of the Morningstar Global Market Indexes for 2014:

clocking investment performance

You can read the full article here or use this link to download a PDF of the entire issue of the magazine. (Kudos once again to designer Zach Sherwood for his work on the graphics.)



Throughout my career at Morningstar, the Chicago-based investment research firm, I've used creative language and visual elements to explain complex investment information and ideas. This is a personal site--all opinions expressed here are my own.

Contact David Harrell
Twitter
LinkedIn
personal website

Links
Graphic Detail
EagerEyes
FILWD
Morningstar Magazine's Chart Tumblr
Spurious Correlations
Statpics
Storytelling with Data
Visual Complexity


Recent Posts
A Ten-Year Performance Current
Visualizing an Investment Watchlist
Clocking 2016 Investment Performance
Another Year on the Clock
Stacking Two Market Corrections
Histogram Jam
Investment Performance Currents
Mapping Investment Portfolios and Indexes
Clocking Investment Performance
Charting an Investment Portfolio by Holding Time


Archives
June 2014
July 2014
August 2014
November 2014
February 2015
April 2015
January 2016
February 2016
March 2016
January 2017
March 2017
July 2017